John Smith 6-6-06 America and Americans Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a controversial

story about Randal P. McMurphy, a rugged anti-hero who won't "play ball" with the system. Many critics have denounced the book, saying it unjustly portrays mental health facilities as prisons of ridicule, nazi-style codes of conduct, and overall blandness. While if read literally, the setting may seem unrealistically cruel, with practices of lobotomy and electro-therapy being a common form of punishment, the brutal machine of authority within the asylum is meant to server as a symbol of the controlling society in which we live. Mental health treatment is clearly an essential benefit of our society, and has helped thousands of people conquer mental illnesses like depression or schizophrenia through counseling, group therapy, and medication. It is easy, therefore, to see why people would be offended by the negative portrayal of nurses and treatment practices. From the beginning it is clear that Nurse Ratched, the antagonist, is using manipulative mind games to keep the patients at each others throats and find security within her clear-cut rules and regulations. If patients brake the rules they are submitted to a barbarous system of electro-shock therapy which is supposed to "disinfect" the minds of the "insane". The act of lobotomy, cutting off the frontal lobe of the brain, is used if the patients continue to disobey protocol. The carefree way in which these harsh tactics are thrust upon the occupants in the facility is likely an unrealistic exaggeration of the way these mind-cleansing tactics were, and currently are, used. Critics are frustrated with this portrayal, and feel as though Kesey doesn't appreciate the privilege many mentally

disabled people have within our society. What I believe many of these critics either don't perceive, or perhaps choose not to perceive, is that Kesey is using McMurphy, the hospital, and the Nurse, to symbolize the fact that it is society itself that is manifesting the growing problem of mental illness. Nurse Ratched should be viewed as a symbol of society itself. The controlling and seemingly pointless rules denote the oppressing nature of our society on people who should think outside of the box and not conform to cultural, spiritual, and economic ideals. As McMurphy puts it, the Nurse is an example of "people who try to make you so weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to". This can clearly be translated into a statement about society in general. As the Nurse attempts to combat McMurphies nonconformist attitude with acts like taking away the game room and not allowing the patients to watch the World Series, the reader may draw a parallel to the limited acceptance of new ideas and identities in the general public. The repetitive nature of everything the Nurse does further denotes many aspects of our own culture, such as the nature of work and everyday styles of living. Furthermore, the ruthless tactic of shock therapy seems to symbolize the way in which societies values of monetary gain and superficial beauty are "burned" into the minds of the people through the media, television, and even their own education. This results in a "lobotomy" of free-thought so-to-speak. Another tool that Kesey uses to convey his distaste for forced conformity is the character "Chief" Bromden. In reality, many paranoid schizophrenics like Bromden have absolutely no sense of reality and live within their own world of often-unpleasant

imagination. In the book however, the Chiefs delusions have special implications behind them. It seems as though the Chief's mind has been so corrupted by society that he can no longer see or express things the way he wants to. He sees powerful people like McMurphy and Nurse Ratched as big, and quiet, less confident people such as himself as small. This reflects the importance that our society puts on power rather then on happiness and generosity. The fact that Chief refuses to talk in the beginning of the story represents his inability to have free thought even within himself. As McMurphy encourages Bromden to be his own man and become the rugged individualist that he himself is, some of Bromden's hallucinations such as "the fog", which represents the barriers society has squeezed around him, begin to disappear. Like Bromden's delusions of oppression, Kesey's portrayal of the hospital and it's hardships are symbolic of the controlling nature of society. While it is understandable that people would be offended by the depiction of the asylum, it is not justified. If Kesey overstepped the bounds of dramatic effect in the characterization of societies misplaced values through an exaggerated picture of a mental asylum, then so did Melville in his overly bland version of the workplace in "Bartleby the Scrivener", and clearly this is not the case. In literature things will always be exaggerated, fooled with, and manipulated in order to convey sometimes disturbing, but always-necessary messages, which can hopefully give new perspective to the reader.